President Joe Biden’s disapproval rating has risen to nearly 60% in the latest polls, with most voters of that group reporting they do not like a single, solitary thing he has done since taking office. (And I thought my comment section was bad.) Apart from his handling of the coronavirus, the major reason for this widespread displeasure involves inflation and the sagging economy. A CNN poll from earlier this month found only 18% of respondents report having “a lot of confidence” in the president’s ability to handle the economy, while his overall approval rating on economic matters sits at a lowly 37%.
Myriad liberal monetary policy remedies have been floated from the administration and broader political Left. Despite acknowledging that “we need to get inflation under control,” Biden claimed recently that the way out is continued deficit spending in the form of passing his doomed “Build Back Better” boondoggle. Others on the Left have argued that the way to right the economy is through the implementation of price controls on pharmaceuticals and other products or through adherence to the Candy Land economic philosophy of Modern Monetary Theory, the limitless printing of money.
Heads of state throughout history have loved to engrave coinage with their own likeness, whether due to tradition, for propagandistic means, or to slake their own hubris — typically some combination of the three. And as hinted in the previous Then and Now, there are some easy ironies to be pointed out between these would-be divine sovereigns printing their images onto specie and our own dear, dottering executive determined to make his poorly named, thrice-failed spending plan the face of inflation and economic sputtering.
We trace the first-known coinage system, which dates back to 700 B.C., to the ancient kingdom of Lydia. The Lydians, according to Herodotus, “were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coins and the first who sold goods by retail.” More specifically, it was King Croesus, of “richer than” fame, who is credited with this earliest issuance of a bimetallic coinage system, which included both gold and silver coins and utilized a purity requirement as a means of standardization. The gold coins were imprinted with lions to symbolize royalty.
Following his conquest of Lydia, Cyrus the Great introduced this coinage system to the vast Persian Empire in 546 B.C. Several years later, Darius I introduced a new, purer version of the Persian gold coin, the daric, which he had cast with the image of a king. Ancient monetary policy of the Achaemenid Persians and other such empires was built on, and exemplified in, the centralization of power and authority: Darius, for instance, made the printing of coinage by satraps punishable by death, as it was seen to be usurping royal prerogative.
The ancient Greeks relied on a nondenominational barter system before 600 B.C., but when coin currency became standardized, it was uniquely decentralized. By about 500 B.C., each Greek city-state minted its own coins, stamped with a patron deity or symbol important to the city. Much like today, visitors from different city-states had to visit moneylenders to exchange their currency, which often incurred its own fee. The sole exception was the Athenian drachma, which was accepted widely outside of Athens thanks to the city’s economic positioning and vast networks of trade.
Perhaps the president would like to give out inflation bonds stamped with his own face?
